


the methodology of not dating until you do

by molotovhappyhour



Series: Reading Between the Lines [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5518316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been getting coffee together every Tuesday and Thursday for the past six months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the methodology of not dating until you do

**Author's Note:**

> For [glenflower](http://www.glenflower.tumblr.com) on tumblr! I hope you like your secret Santa!

(They’ve been getting coffee together every Tuesday and Thursday for the past six months.)

“How’s school?” Levi asks like he always does on Thursdays, holding what Eren knows is an almost too-sweet mocha between his hands to warm them. “The semester’s almost over, right?” Eren watches the way Levi’s mouth moves, like he always does, and he’s glad that he’s gotten good enough at paying attention that he can watch Levi’s mouth _and_ hear what Levi’s saying. He didn’t used to be so good at that.

“Yeah,” Eren replies, his own peppermint mocha cooling on the table beside its lid, steam rising from the surface of the coffee in a thin cloud. “Finals are in two weeks. I’m studying with some of my classmates for astronomy. They need me for the math and I need to make sure I pass.”

Levi snorts, wrinkling his nose in a way that flatters his face. Eren isn’t sure how the fuck he does that and he doesn’t want to ask. But it’d probably be useful to know. Eventually. One of these Tuesdays or Thursdays.

“You’ll pass. What is your lowest grade, an eighty-seven?”

Eren grins, lifting his cup to hide it. “Aw, you remembered.”

“You were complaining for _weeks_.” Levi sips from his coffee, sighing against the mouth of his lid and licking a stray bead of whipped cream from his upper lip. Eren has to bite his tongue from mimicking the gesture, settling instead to sip again at his own coffee, keeping his mouth occupied. “I couldn’t _not_ remember.”

“It wasn’t _weeks_.” The skin crinkles at the corner of Levi’s eyes and Eren’s chest tightens in the way that it has a habit of doing these days. Baffling. “It was maybe, like, four days.”

“Which spanned two weeks.” Levi flicks his fingers to the side in an overdramatic gesture of condescension. “Thus the plural applies. You were complaining for _weeks_ , and then the next test you took you got, like, a ninety-four, which finally shut you up.”

Eren snorts out a laugh, eyeing the small, triumphant smile that rises on Levi’s lips. The watery afternoon light brought in by the window they sit beside shades them perfectly, catches shadows on the curves that will one day be laugh lines.

(He wants to brain himself against the table, just a little. It might make is head a little quieter.)

“Whatever. I’m _studying_ this weekend since I don’t work, like a Good Student, and that’s the way school’s been.” He frees his hands of the coffee cup to rest his chin in his palms, crossing his ankles beneath his chair. “How’s work?”

Levi rolls his shoulders in a liquid shrug, popping the plastic lid off of his own coffee, revealing half-melted whipped cream floating on the top. For a second, Eren lets his mind go, and he wonders what it would taste like if he caught it from Levi’s lips one day. Would it be any sweeter? Levi likes his coffee that way—overly sweet—and maybe kissing him would be like drinking it. It would be worth a countless amount of things to find out.

His brain snaps back into place, far from where it had been wandering, when Levi begins to speak.

“Work is work,” Levi tells him, and Eren looks away from his mouth to meet his eyes instead, watching storm clouds curl around his pupils. “Editing is fucking exhausting. One of my clients has to get rid of a whole fucking chapter because it doesn’t fit, unless they can figure out a way to add in, like, three different characters whose _sole purpose_ will be exposition. And they’re arguing with me about it, as if this _isn’t_ what I get paid for, or whatever.” He pushes his hair away from his face only to have it fall to the side of his forehead, the ends brushing over his cheek.

(Eren’s fingers itch. It’s an inexplicable feeling that has been haunting him for—weeks. Months. _Christ_.)

“Sounds like,” Eren says, holding his cup to soothe his fingers, “you need a break.”

Passing pedestrians cast shadows when they walk by, making Levi’s eyes glitter when he smiles.

“I really fucking do.”

“I’ve got Netflix,” Eren tells him, smiling against his cup when he lifts it to his lips. He hopes he doesn’t look like he’s dying, because he feels like he might be.

(This is something abnormal. Something outside the routine. And his heart is trying to claw its way outside his ribs.)

Levi arches an eyebrow, creating an artful curve.

“Don’t you have Good Student things to be doing today?”

Eren wonders if that’s a no—and pushes his luck anyway. After all, it’s not like he’d asked a direct question for Levi to answer.

“Not really. Besides, seems like you could use a breather, and I’ve got shit to watch in my Queue. It’ll be fun and I can order pizza.” He clears his throat but holds Levi’s gaze. “It gives me an excuse not to have to cook anything.”

Levi laughs, loudly, and his heart squeezes as if grabbed by a fist.

“Okay,” he says, a wheeze flavouring his voice. “You’ve sold me. Anything to help you live the life of a lazy student, kid.”

Eren grins at him, curling his toes inside his shoes, because at least Levi can’t see that.

“Okay,” he replies.

And he brings his coffee back to his mouth so he doesn’t puke.

(It almost scalds his tongue.)

-

(Levi remembers very little about Eren’s apartment except it had been clean and smelled of Eren.)

“So when do we get to meet your boyfriend?”

Hanji’s shape fills Levi’s doorframe, almost enough to warrant him to look away from the new manuscript he’s glancing over before he starts looking over it with a fine-toothed comb. He doesn’t have enough caffeine in his system for that yet. In fact, he doesn’t really have enough caffeine in his system for Hanji’s questions, either. But here they are, Levi at his desk and Hanji at his door, set in place as if refusing to move—as if Levi would give them the satisfaction of standing up to push them out.

“What boyfriend?” Levi asks, already highlighting cursory errors he finds on each page, picking out typos with practiced skill. There isn’t a single one of his books that has a dropped letter or misspelled word. It’s something he takes a lot of pride in.

“The one you get coffee with every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon?” Their tone _does_ catch Levi’s attention for more than half-a-breath. They sound genuinely baffled. “Whenever anyone is like ‘hey, do you want to go out for a late lunch?’ you’re always like ‘no, I’m getting coffee with this kid from Ymir’s bookstore.’ And _everyone_ wants to know when you’re going to bring him by to show him off.”

Levi only blinks at them, slowly, unsure how, exactly, to answer their question. They’re _not_ a couple—Eren isn’t his boyfriend. But when they say it out loud, it does sound very... routine, what they do. Habitual. And there are a lot of novels that start with this premise—some grumpy as fuck businessman meets a cute bookstore clerk because he’s friends with the grumpy woman who owns the place and then the clerk and the businessman go out for coffee, because the clerk smiled so wide and his eyes were so green and he asked so nicely...

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Levi tells them, almost absently, occupied by the nerves tightening his chest, Hanji at his door, and his phone buzzing on his desk with a text message. For a moment, his phone dominates all of his attention as he reaches for it, leaving his words for Hanji to take or leave as they want.

(The tightness in his chest uncurls a little when he reads over the text hovering on his lock screen—from Eren, fucking kid. Probably sneezed or something and assumed someone was talking about him. Probably knew Hanji was asking prying questions. Probably knew Levi was thinking about him.)

Levi almost drops his phone when Hanji speaks again.

“Sure,” and Levi glances at them to narrow his eyes, their wide smile making his cheeks burn. “You don’t have a boyfriend. Right. I’ll let the office know you’re bringing him by for the holiday party.” They pause, almost out the door, their fingers curled against the doorframe. “Unless you have plans for your birthday?”

His phone vibrates again in his hand and Hanji leaves without Levi’s reply, laughter trailing behind them as they do. It’s almost enough to make Levi shut his door in a form of protest—because Hanji doesn’t deserve to know yet that their question made him consider things, made him _think_ about things, made him think about Eren—but he’s better than that. He’s probably better than that, anyway.

And even if he wasn’t, well, he has a text message to reply to—because Eren is probably telepathic. Probably knows _every time_ Levi thinks about him.

( _hope work isnt terrible_ , Eren had sent the first time. _ymir says she hopes it is tho that way ull come by and buy stuff_. It had made Levi smile.)

That’s embarrassing to think about.

(The second one had moved Levi’s heart from his chest to his throat, made him sure Eren knows when his name is mentioned in conversation.

 _are u doing anything for christmas??? u said it was ur birthday but its also a holiday soooo_ )

With Hanji gone, Levi allows himself a moment to rest his forehead against his desk.

And when no one else arrives, he allows himself two.

-

It’s the second Tuesday in December, and a soft spattering of rain gliding down the windows of the coffee shop, almost precisely halfway between Ymir’s bookstore and Levi’s publishing company. It smells like bread and coffee and that hipster garbage the city is famous for hums softly from the radio.

Eren loves this place.

( _“where do you want to go?”_ He’d asked when Levi had said yes—something entirely surprising and absolutely terrifying. He’d just thought Levi was beautiful, and he’d never been particularly adept at subtlety.

_“anywhere but a fucking starbucks.”_

He’d almost cried from laughing.)

“So you said something about Christmas plans this week.” There’s a new drink in Levi’s hand today. It’s something just as sweet as usual, but a darker roast and with more cinnamon. Eren can smell it from here—and it makes him wonder what it would taste like from Levi’s lips.

He’s been having that thought a lot, lately.

“I did,” Eren replies. “I definitely did. You said, before, that your birthday falls on Christmas, and everyone I know is going out of town to see family, or whatever, and Mikasa is meeting her girlfriend’s parents this year.” God, it sounds like he’s giving _excuses_ for why he and Levi should spend the holiday together, not _reasons_. Shape up, Eren Jaeger. Get your game face on. “So, if you weren’t doing anything, I figured we could celebrate your birthday or something.”

“So your friends are going out of town, which frees you up for me?” Both of Levi’s eyebrows arch toward his hairline, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Eren feels his cheeks go dark with shame.

“ _No_.” Game face, _game face_. “No, I just—if you wanted. It’s your birthday, so—I mean, you probably definitely have plans, it’s what birthdays are for, _obviously_ , so, like—I understand if you’re busy. For sure. Holidays. You know. But, like—but if you’re not—or.” He clears his throat an feels the shame in his cheeks reach for his ears, grabbing on and pulling. “Uh. Nevermind.”

Levi’s coffee cup is hiding his mouth, but the skin at the corners of his eyes are wrinkled as if in laughter, and his shoulders are shaking with it. His cheeks are pink with how much he’s enjoying Eren’s misery.

(That makes everything _worse_. He’s beautiful while he’s laughing at the way Eren’s embarrassing himself.)

“Sorry,” Levi clears his throat as Eren lifts a hand to cover his eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply I had plans. Sorry. Sure we can do something for the twenty-fifth if you want to.” Eren peeks from between his fingers, holding his breath. “What did you have in mind? It’s a Friday, so in keeping with the theme, I’m assuming coffee’s out.”

Something that feels a little bit like hope flutters within his ribcage, tickling his sternum when its wings rattle a little too hard.

“Uh.” His voice cracks and he tries again, crossing his toes inside his sneakers that Levi ignores it. “Uh, I was thinking we could go see a movie, or something, and that you could come back to my place for, um, hot chocolate, or whatever. You know? Something like that.”

Levi bobs his head in a nod and Eren’s stomach settles a little. At the very least, he feels a little less like crawling beneath the table to die, which is a definite improvement over his state a couple too-fast heartbeats ago.

“What movie?”

Eren drops his hand from his eyes, curling his fingers around his cup nervously. “Uh. Well, I was thinking Star Wars. The new one. If you wanted to, maybe.”

Levi snorts out a laugh and Eren wonders when he’ll stop feeling like he’s been punched in the chest. Most of him hopes it never gets old.

“You’re not seeing that opening night? You come off as a more dedicated nerd than that.”

Eren laughs. “I thought I’d wait to see what you wanted to do. It’s a little late for opening night tickets now, but I’m sure I could sneak in and catch the first twenty minutes before I got caught and thrown out.”

Levi hides his smile again behind his cup. “You’ve been thinking a lot about this?”

( _yes_ , Eren says without opening his mouth.)

“A little,” is what he ends up saying out loud. “Just cursory plans, obviously. Nothing definite.”

Levi hums softly, sipping from his cup, and glances to the side, watching pedestrians hurry through the rain. His eyes are _gorgeous_ this way, you know? They were made for this city, his eyes. But, on the other hand, Eren is sure that they’d compliment any sky of any city he’d ever live in.

He can’t say either of these things out loud, of course. But the thought is nice to have when he lets it linger.

“I’d love to,” Levi speaks, _finally_ , and Eren feels even less closer to death this way. “The movie sounds fun and your apartment isn’t a _horrific_ place to spend time.” Any sort of sting that the words might’ve carried—though Eren didn’t feel any, not with Levi looking the way he does—is soothed over instantly by the soft smile on his face. _God_ , this is pathetic, isn’t it? It has to be.

“Thanks,” Eren replies, grinning wide enough to almost split his face. “Haven’t gotten to celebrate your birthday before. Allergic to anything?”

Levi blinks. “No?”

“Do you like cakes?”

“Generally? Cheesecakes are probably one of my favourites, but...”

“Okay.” Eren takes a sip of his own coffee, nodding against the lip of the cup. “So... so we’ve got plans, yeah?”

The next smile Levi gives him is one that Eren wants to save for the rest of his _life_. Tuck it away and remember it for the times he wants to relive the fact he has, not even once, specified that he wants this to be a date. And he won’t, either. Levi’s already said _yes_. There’s no point in complicating the issue any further.

(Eren saves the smile anyway, inside his heart.

It really is strikingly beautiful.)

-

Three coffee-days and countless breathtaking smiles later and Levi feels like death is coming for him.

(He can still taste his coffee from the... from the not-date he just got back from.)

“I can’t go to the office thing.” Their positions are reversed, this time. Hanji is at their desk, their feet propped atop it, and they’re looking at him from his place in their doorway. “I have plans that day.”

Their smile tells him everything he needs to know, and that makes him want to turn right around and walk out, down the stairs of the office building, and probably make his way home. But, instead, he makes a face at them, fighting the urge to twist his hands together as a symbolic representation of his nerves.

“Plans?” They smile a little wider. “The office party is _tonight_ , Levi. You trying to bow out of the Secret Santa?”

“No,” and the way they ease the mood that way is something that Levi will always be grateful for. “If you want, I can pick up a cheap, shitty gift for people to froth over like animals if that’ll make it easier to not go.”

They laugh, tipping their head back. “Not necessary.” But their eyes are back on him in another moment, shining. “But I want pics. I want pictures of your boyfriend. I want _pictures_ , Levi. A selfie. A sneaky picture of his profile. Give me information on this super-secret boyfriend!”

His cheeks itch with embarrassment and Levi takes back everything nice that he’d just thought about them.

“He’s _not_ my boyfriend.”

They grin at him, wide. “Yet, apparently.”

This time, Levi does turn around and leave, rubbing at his face to try and clean away the blush that has to be there. His free hand moves of its own accord as his phone vibrates, bringing up to read a new message, shutting his office door behind him and giving himself some peace.

Except there is no peace to be had.

**Hanji:** _pics!!!! ;)_

His phone sits in his drawer for the rest of the afternoon.

-

Eren is so nervous that his palms are probably sweating. The soles of his feet are probably sweating, and the thought disgusts him. It would probably disgust Levi if Eren said it out loud, and so he keeps it to himself.

(He’s probably fucking all this up, you know. Cocking _all_ of it up. He’d borrowed Connie’s car because he didn’t have one of his own, and he’d _cleaned_ it, of course, but did he clean it well enough? Does Levi think that the car is kind of junky? It isn’t that bad, certainly, and he’s infinitely grateful to Connie, but would he have been better off taking the bus and meeting Levi at the theatre?

Christ, this is so much. Eren _hates_ being in limbo. He wishes he could beat himself up and just _ask—_ )

“This isn’t as crowded as I thought it would be,” Levi muses beside him, a small bag of popcorn sitting in his lap. He looks so different in casual clothes, but no less beautiful, and it makes Eren want to peel out of his own skin.

“Most people saw it opening week, and this is exactly seven days after the release, so.” Eren shrugs and prides himself on the fact that his voice doesn’t shake with how fucking nervous he is. “So I didn’t think it’d be too crowded today. I was hoping, anyway. It gives us some leg room.” He wiggles his feet for emphasis.

“Because I _need_ leg room, yeah.” Levi smiles, a little, as he wiggles his legs in response as the theatre goes dark for the new trailers. The darkness just makes Eren’s heart crawl up his throat. Not being able to see makes him hyperaware of Levi beside him, the armrest of the chair the only barrier between their bodies. It makes his skin feel too tight for his bones.

The walls are closing in on him, and he thinks he might be wheezing.

( _“so_ , _”_ Ymir had said yesterday as they were closing the store, _“when is your boyfriend going to come back and buy shit from my store?”_ She had squinted, come up behind him, and ruffled his hair. _“did you chase him away by offering to fuck between my shelves?”_

Eren had almost slammed his head into the reference section. “ _no! okay, one, we’re not—he’s not my—no! and if I was going to fuck anyone, for reference, it’d be over the front desk or in the corner by the beanbags, so.”_

Ymir had laughed loud enough to hurt his ear drums—but it hadn’t stopped her talking.

_“what are you waiting for, kiddo? i thought you’d been dating since you asked him for coffee!”_

He’d wanted to crawl between the books and never come out.

And right now he’s wishing that he had.)

“Eren.” He blinks away his memory, as well as the urge to hide away inside a book or two. The newest _Star Trek_ trailer fades out, the screen going dark before flashing green for the next one. “Hey.”

“Hm?” He glances away from the trailer—it’s a movie he doesn’t want to see. And even if he did, this sounds infinitely more important, whatever it is that wants to come out of Levi’s mouth.

He’s not a hundred percent sure, however, that it was wise to turn to look at him. The dimness around then, cut by the brightness of the screen, sharpens Levi’s features in deadly ways—it makes his throat feel almost too dry to swallow properly. But Levi’s looking at him too, a frown hanging on his lips.

“Uh,” Eren speaks because Levi hasn’t yet.

“Is this a date?”

There it goes—Eren’s heart has dropped out of his body, through the floor, and is now rocketing toward the center of the earth. This is the end of his life. This—it’s over. It’s over before it began because Levi has figured it out and suddenly everything is Weird. He shouldn’t’ve let Ymir’s boyfriend-talk go to his head. He really, _really_ shouldn’t’ve.

“Because,” Levi continues, because Eren can’t find any words to say to excuse his behaviour, “I thought that the first time you asked me for coffee might’ve been a date. But then it became a weekly thing, so it felt like it just was a thing that we did, and that it wasn’t a date at all. But movies, generally, are a date-thing, and have been a date thing since drive-ins in the fifties, but I wasn’t sure if it was just because you were lonely around the holidays or because you just wanted to see this movie with me and you remembered it was my birthday.” There’s a pause, punctuated by a soft smile. “So I wanted to know if this was a date?”

Eren hopes that when he moves his mouth he doesn’t look like a fish. That would be embarrassing.

“I want it to be,” he says when he finds the words, even though the drumroll is starting for the opening theme of _Star Wars_. It should be his cue to shut his fucking mouth, but he doesn’t think he can just yet. Not when Levi had asked like that. “Um. I want it to be. I wanted the coffee to be a date too—like, all of them. But I wasn’t, uh, sure that you were interested. So. So, I want this to be a date, but I also don’t want to make this weird, and I don’t want you to stop being friends with me because I think you’re beautiful.”

Levi blinks at him—at first, rapidly, and then slowly. He works his jaw, chewing on his words before dropping them into Eren’s lap.

“Beautiful?” He says as if he’d baffled. “You think—“ He shakes his head slowly, lowering his voice when the dialogue for the beginning of the film starts. “I want this to be a date.”

“Yeah?” When Eren breathes it seems like his heart has crawled its way out of the Earth’s core, rumbling against the inside of his chest at a pace that’s almost too fast. “Uh. You do?”

Levi nods and it’s small. A smile, however, is poised upon his mouth like a decoration. “Uh. Yeah. I, uh. I kind of want the coffee to keep being dates, yeah? If you...”

Eren lifts the armrest between them, pushing himself into Levi’s space and leaning forward to brush their noses. “ _Yes_ ,” he says, almost desperately. “Yes. Date me every Tuesday and Thursday. Date me every day of the week. Date me _all the time_.”

Levi almost laughs and Eren almost lets him, but the urge to kiss him wins out over everything else, and so he meets Levi’s mouth to taste his laughter instead, and it feels a lot like love.

(He was right. Levi does taste sweet. Even sweeter when he gets to open Levi’s mouth with his tongue.

Sweet enough to ignore the whispered “ _ew_ ” two rows in front of them.)

-

His skin has been on fire since the movie ended, and now that he’s pulling Eren into his own apartment, Eren having dropped his keys the instant the door was open. Levi’s hands are in Eren’s hair and Eren is pulling at Levi’s shirt with little direction and incredible fervor. The keys—now that Eren has kicked his door shut and Levi has locked it—stay on the floor, forgotten.

“Um,” Eren sounds so breathless that Levi doesn’t want to let him finish speaking, wishes instead that he was pulling him into another kiss—but he refrains. “There is—I made you cheesecake, and there’s a gift on the couch—“

Levi can feel affection so molten that it scorches the inside of his bones and he’s certain he’s been in love for months now—has to have been.

“You _made_ cheesecake?”

“Uh. Yes.” Kisses are peppered along his face and his chest feels full to bursting. “Yes. I made cheesecake. You said you liked cheesecake? So—“

This time, Levi _does_ pull Eren into another kiss, dragging their tongues together languidly enough to make Eren groan into his mouth. Eren’s hands a fucking freezing when they push their way up his shirt, but Levi can’t find it in himself to care enough.

“Was that—“ Eren takes a deep breath. “Was that a good call?”

“Eren, that was a great call. The best call. I—holy shit. Kiss me.”

“But you have a present—“

“Happy fucking birthday to me, I’ll open it later, just _kiss me_ and let me love you the way I’ve been wanting to since you fucking asked about Christmas.”

Eren, to his credit, does not need to be told twice, apparently. The kiss Levi is brought into his world-changing—beautiful and empowering. His teeth dig into Levi’s lower lip and he sucks in into his mouth, pulling the flat of his tongue over it with a soft sound. It makes Levi knees weak, makes the heat in his bones curl in his gut. He hasn’t been kissed like this in _ages_ —and he hasn’t been kissed, ever, feeling the way he does right now.

“I think I love you too,” Eren says when he lets Levi go.

“I think we should’ve known sooner,” Levi replies, and takes another kiss. And another one. Maybe ten more. _Christ_. They should’ve been doing this from the beginning. He should’ve asked for clarification _sooner_. They’ve been dancing around this for—

“Looks like you’re my boyfriend now,” Levi laughs, not even wondering how they made their way to Eren’s room, remembering the blur of the hallway as he’d pushed at Eren’s shoulders blindly.

“Is that funny?” Eren asks, dropping down onto his own mattress, tugging Levi between his legs.

“You have no idea.” He bestows another kiss on Eren’s lips and Eren brings both his hands up to cradle Levi’s face. It’s gentle and it’s beautiful and Levi feels so precious between Eren hands that his heart almost bursts beneath his sternum.

Eren whispers his confession a second time against Levi’s lips.

Levi returns it, just as soft and just as eager.

And then Eren drops backward onto his bed.

Oh, and, of course, they live happily ever after.

(And then, on Monday, when the office meets back up after the holidays, Hanji has received more than enough pictures to share with all each and every one of their coworkers. Levi is surprised to receive a multitude of compliments on his taste.

He is not, surprised, however, to find that there was a betting pool as to the traits of his alleged boyfriend, nor is he surprised to find that money changed hands, or that Hanji had won most of it. Unethically.

But when he glances at his new lockscreen and finds both Eren and himself smiling back at him, he discovers that he doesn’t care about that all that much.)


End file.
